The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story that explores mental illness, gender roles, and the oppression of women in the 19th century. The story is narrated by an unnamed woman who is taken to a secluded country house by her husband, John, a physician, after she suffers from what is likely postpartum depression. John prescribes the “rest cure,” forbidding her from working, writing, or engaging in stimulating activity, believing this will restore her health.

Confined to an upstairs room with disturbing yellow wallpaper, the narrator becomes increasingly obsessed with its strange pattern. As her isolation deepens, she begins to imagine a woman trapped behind the wallpaper, struggling to break free. The wallpaper becomes a powerful symbol of the narrator’s own confinement and loss of identity.

Over time, the narrator’s grip on reality deteriorates. In the climactic scene, she tears down the wallpaper in an attempt to free the imagined woman—symbolically freeing herself. By the end, she has fully rejected her imposed role, though at the cost of her sanity.

The story is a haunting critique of patriarchal medical practices and the silencing of women’s voices.